Re: [secdir] dir review of draft-laurie-pki-sunlight-05

[Ben Laurie <[e-mail]>]

On 24 January 2013 19:06, Jeffrey Hutzelman <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Similarly, as an anti-spam measure, this document proposes that logs accept
> only certificates which chain back to a known CA, and requires that logs
> validate each submitted certificate before appending it to the log.  This
> sounds good, but it's not the only possible mechanism, and so I think MUST
> is too strong here.  Additionally, there is no discussion of the security
> implications if a client depends on a log to do this and the log does not
> actually do so.  Rather than requiring that logs validate every submitted
> certificate, the document should only RECOMMEND that they do so, and make
> clear that clients MUST NOT depend on such validation having been done.

On second thoughts, whilst that is an effective anti-spam measure, it
is also part of the functionality of CT: i.e. to identify misissue and
give some means to do something about it. The CA check ensures we have
someone to blame for misissue.

I am not averse to suggestions that achieve the overall aim, but I
don't see the virtue of leaving it vague in the description of the
experiment we are actually running.